A Gothic Gamebook - Oddities & Rarities 2025

A Gothic Gamebook

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Beware and warning! This book is different from other books. You and you alone are in charge of what happens in this story!

The 21st century is known for its interactive art, where the boundaries between audience and performers are blurred thanks to the use of technology. However, such openness in a work of art was also part of experimental projects in the previous century. For example, so-called gamebooks were designed as interactive stories in which the reader could decide the fate of the characters by choosing narrative paths at the end of each chapter.

In A Gothic Gamebook, the audience will write the story of a young couple in love according to the tropes of early 19th-century Gothic literature. For each possible scene, the musicians prepare several songs from the German Romantic song repertoire. The music itself is full of references to magic, fantastic creatures, ghosts and horror.

The musicians are collaboratively building a small corpus of tropes from Gothic literature and lieder from the German Romantic musical tradition.

The project is still in development, and a first performance will be included in the Oddities & Rarities 2025 - Real and Unreal at Orpheus Institute on Sunday 30 November.

Concert design (2025)

Rehearsals

Final Repertoire

Storyline

The name X and Y are inspired by a short story from Gli amori difficili by Italo Calvino.

Introduction

Two lovers, X and Y, are separated from each other. The greedy tutors of X have decided to give them to an old, rich bachelor without their consent.

Right before their separation, the two plan to meet in a desolate castle and start a new life together. In order to do that, X has to flee from their prison and Y has to travel through the dark forest by night without being followed.

X arrives at night, close to what once was a living community around the castle's estate. Rain is falling from the sky, making the old graveyard looks ever more sombre.

Y is wandering through the dark forest, trying to find their way to the ruined castle in time.

Act I

Both characters encounter a series of challenges, both natural and supernatural, during the long night.

At the end, tired and proved by many sleepless hours, they embrace the realm of dreams.

Act II

X and Y wake up and encounter The Witch and The Hermit, the first representing a villainous character, while the latter a mentoring figure.

The story reaches a climax, proving the dedication of the couple to their extremes.

Act III

Resolution of the story, leading to both a happy ending or a tragic finale.

Network

A Gothic Gamebook - Story Paths 2025 (link not functioning. See static image of the network here).

List of Scenes

File28comes_fromgoes_tokeyword
Abandoned horse in the forest - AGG 2025
Ancient grave - AGG 2025
Danse macabre - AGG 2025
Daydreaming about eternal love - AGG 2025
Demonic deception - AGG 2025
Demons keep the lovers apart - AGG 2025-
Despair and homesickness. Giving up their dreams - AGG 2025-
Elf of the woods creates charming illusion - AGG 2025
Falling asleep - AGG 2025
Falling unconscious from undead encounter - AGG 2025-
Following path and getting lost - AGG 2025
Happy ending - AGG 2025-
Lonely man is burying a coffin - AGG 2025
Meeting the Witch - AGG 2025
Mistrust of animals - AGG 2025-
Moonlight - AGG 2025
Prayer of the Hermit - AGG 2025
Reaching higher ground during a storm - AGG 2025
Recognition of the evil sorceress - AGG 2025-
Sad ending - AGG 2025-
Seek shelter in abandoned monastery - AGG 2025
Staying awake - AGG 2025
Taking a "shortcut" - AGG 2025
Telling own story with a song - AGG 2025
Wandering through the forest - AGG 2025-
Wandering through the ruins - AGG 2025-
Witches' ritual - AGG 2025
Witch's love enchantment - AGG 2025

List of Songs

Citations

The fantastic is the explaination of the obscure zone where the most unrestrained passions of desire and the terrors of guilt mix together.
The fantastic or supernatural tale is one of the most typical products of 19th-century fiction, and one of the most significant genres for us nowadays, in that it tells us so much about what goes on inside the individual and about our collective symbols.

To our sensibilities today, the fantastic element, that lies at the centre of their plots always seemed charged with meaning, signifying the emergence of the unconscious, the repressed, the forgotten,
whatever has been suppressed by our rational consciousness.
It is the phantom of our own self whose intimate relationship with, and whose powerful influence upon our soul, either plunges us into hell or elevates us to heaven
The rustic magic has an incredible charm. It lies, you might say, on the ambiguous border between poetry and reality. People communicate with the infernal powers without entirely abandoning God. The most ordinary objects become sacred and magic: an ear of wheat or a willow brach can create hopes and fears.
All the grotesque and infernal forms that the fantasy of the painter or poet could ever imagine were crowding in...
From the night onward my nature was in some way doubled; there were within me two men, neither of whom knew the other. Sometimes I thought I was a priest who dreamed every night that he was a nobleman, sometimes I was a nobleman who dreamed that he was a priest.
More than anything I loved to read, to take walks alone, and to dream, to dream! It is difficult to say exactly what I dreamed of: sometimes, it's true, I seemed to see myself standing in front of a half-closed door behind which unknown mysteries were hidden. I would stand, and wait, and fall into a trance and keep imagining what was ahead...

Inspirations from Fantastic Literature

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Edited by Roger Caillois

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To be continued...

Translated by Sabrina Bottari

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To be continued...

To be continued...

"Tutto questo mi ha l'aria di un sogno" mi dissi "ma che altro è la vita umana? I miei sogni sono soltanto più straordinari di altri; ecco tutto. [...] Dov'è il possibile? E dove l'impossibile?"

Roles

Rules

  • Scenes are heterogeneous in length, between 1 and 3 songs.
  • Scenes are divided in 3 Acts, normally lasting 25 minutes each.

Changing spotlight

  • Public can always choose to divert the spotlight to the inactive character. If the scene has already been played, then the GM has free choice to place the new character into a new scene, adjacent to the previous one.